Demeter on the Rocks
by mellish
Summary: Patience is not Diva's best virtue. She wants babies, and she wants them now. Oneshot.


Warning: Implied spoilers for the Paris arc, particularly episodes 30-32.

**Demeter on the Rocks**

It is the most ironic thing in the world that the only time she ever really _asks _for something, her Chevaliers can't give it to her – which is very, very unfair, and they know it too, the way she lies on her side, refuses to look at them, and harasses the doll she is playing with, breaking off its limbs, slowly; plucking out the curly hairs on its artificial head until it is completely bald. She throws it on the floor and watches the precious porcelain shatter with impassive eyes, tired of waiting, tired of _patience_.

Diva wants babies, and she wants them _now_.

The thought that she can't have them even takes the song out of her throat; she's been thinking it over these past few days, and it infuriates her more every single time, because if she really is their _queen_, as they always say she is, then they're supposed to grant her wishes no matter how impossible. But maybe she's being unreasonable, now, because they've definitely tried, haven't they? - but the memory is a difficult and disgusting thing, flesh on flesh and broken breathing, and she doesn't want to recall, and she won't.

Diva wants a family. This is not a family. This is a dress and wine and toys and blood and murder, which is perfectly fine, but not _what she wants_, and Amshel has thirty years to work on it every time she sleeps, so why the long wait? Why why why? Nathan coos at her and tangles his fingers in her hair and asks her to calm down a bit because she'll definitely get it all soon and until then, the stage he's been preparing for her is exquisite. She turns on him with furious ice-cold eyes and sinks her teeth into his shoulder and teaches him a lesson, because _eventually_ doesn't matter when she's asking for it _now_, and they're all incompetent.

This is not a family – this is Amshel who is gone all day doing boring business stuffs, and James who is too strict and formal even if his loyalties have never wavered, and Nathan who loves to hear her sing but doesn't like the messy gory things they sometimes do, and Solomon who acts funny all the time (and it is quite possible that he is thinking about Saya-neesama, whom only Diva can think about, whom only Diva, out of all her Chevaliers, can love). Then there is Karl who is more of a poor little puppy than anything else, but Karl understands her better than anyone – Karl understands her thirst for Saya, and Karl understands her boredom, and Karl understands her wanting a family, because she can see it in his eyes even if he never says it. He is a good little dog and not given his due credit, and she loves him to bits (she loves all of them to bits, enough to tear them to pieces, literally) but he is not her family.

Saya-neesama has had a family. She knows this because Amshel told her so, coming up to see her in her tower and giving her blood and rinsing her over with water because sometimes her meals could get very messy, and she hates the thought of his hands on her skin at that time, and she'll never let him touch her like that again – but he respects her now, she is his queen and mother (as he is her slave and father) and it's perfectly all right. Amshel told her about Joel and Hagi and Saya playing the cello (to make up for not having any instruments, Diva decided that she would sing), and about the mansion and how they were a family.

"I want a family," She declared then, simple and naked and wanting Saya to visit her (and that was when they were still in love, and still sisters, and still didn't know each other's faces, but now every time they meet it's with swords and hatred between them and it should make Diva sad, probably, but it's too fun and too stupid). Amshel said that she deserved one and that she would get one eventually, and show that stuffed-up Joel how wrong he was to deny her any of it.

Saya-neesama has a family now, too – Hagi's still hanging around, and then there's that sweet little boy and that noisy guy with stick-uppy hair and all of that pointless breakable Red Shield, and it's not fair, not fair, not fair. Saya has always had humanity and care and a warm arm patting her back and lulling her to sleep and maybe she's even known kisses and embraces and things like that, but they're siblings and supposed to be equal and _Diva has a right to all those things too_, and why doesn't she have them?

It's not fair.

That is why Diva wants babies. She will treat them equally, not like the way they treated her and Saya, and she will sing to them about things like love and beauty and bleeding, and they will listen to her song. Then when they grow up a bit she'll dress them in the nicest clothes and they'll have nice dolls and they'll take walks in the park and they'll all be able to sing together – Nathan will arrange a magnificent concert for them, and it will be splendid. They can all eat together and drink together and then, when she falls asleep, she won't be so lonely anymore, because they'll be by her side, and they can share their warmth.

And she will be a pretty, doting mommy and have good daughters and then it will be a nice family (except with five fathers instead of one, but so what? that way they can all have their pick, and switch around when they feel like it). And at night when she tucks them in and sings them a lullaby they will cling to her breast and they will press their fingers to her face and they will tell her they love her, and they will mean it.

She wants to hear those alien words, she wants them in her ears and against her chest and inside her. Maybe her Chevaliers can't give them to her, but Saya's can, and that's only fair, because who got a taste of family _first_? Even now, a hundred years later, she's still getting so much more than Diva ever will, and it's awful. Saya keeps receiving. Diva has a right to _get. _

Especially if they can't deliver, and this is where she puts her foot down, because no one's listening to her anymore, and she's fed up and frustrated and there's a tune in her throat that's burning for her children-to-be and she wants to _sing it already_. She traces the face of the new doll they'd hoped to entertain her with, imagining it as that little boy, Saya's precious little brother, pale as ivory after she'd sucked him, full of strange cells and growth and gambled life. Something inside her lurches, and she's filled with excitement.

She hears Karl's footsteps below her and smiles.

She's going to be a _great mothe_r.

* * *

A/N: There's quite a bit of made-up backstory here, but hopefully it didn't spin too out of control (Diva's perspective is quite a whirlwind to write). Comments would be greatly appreciated. :D Thanks for reading. 

If you're curious about the title, I based it on the Demeter of mythology: how her name literally means "mother-earth", and how she is the preserver of the life cycle, goddess of agriculture and the seasons, and loving mother to her daughter Persephone.


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